That Nokia you mocked has increased by 70% in stock price this year.

Author: Xiao Bing, Deep Tide TechFlow

In 2014, Microsoft spent 7.2 billion USD to acquire Nokia’s mobile phone business.

That year, everyone thought the story of this Finnish company, which had been around since 1865, was over. The Nokia 3310, a device that could crack walnuts, be thrown against walls without breaking, and play Snake, along with the entire company behind it, was cemented into the album of “Tears of the Era.”

Eleven years later, Jensen Huang called and said they would give them 1 billion USD.

Nokia’s stock has risen about 73% since early January this year, compared to a 130% increase at the same time last year.

This is not a “dead cat bounce” of an old stock; it’s an undervalued hidden thread in the AI narrative from 2025 to 2026.

And almost no Chinese investors are seriously discussing it.

Who is Justin Hotard?

The story begins with a name.

In February 2025, Nokia’s board announced: current CEO Pekka Lundmark would step down, and on April 1, an American named Justin Hotard would take over.

This is Nokia’s first CEO born in the United States since its founding in 1865.

Hotard is a typical figure in the tech circle—“not very famous but every step is in the right place.” Bachelor’s in Electrical Engineering from the University of Illinois, MBA from MIT Sloan. He worked for 8.5 years at Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE), ultimately leading the High-Performance Computing and AI Labs, personally delivering the U.S. Department of Energy’s first exascale supercomputer. Then, early 2024, he was headhunted by Intel, managing the Data Center and AI division, reporting directly to Pat Gelsinger.

Pay attention to his background. HPC, data centers, AI—these three keywords have nothing to do with Nokia’s image over the past decade.

What does Nokia do? Build base stations, telecom equipment, fiber optics, sell to operators. A typical, slow-moving, market-forgotten “old European” hardware company.

But in early 2025, Nokia’s board made a seemingly illogical decision: they didn’t want someone who understood telecom; they wanted someone who understood AI.

In the appointment announcement, Chairman Sari Baldauf said: “The AI and data center markets are key areas for Nokia’s future growth.”

At that moment, almost no one took it seriously. The market responded calmly, with a slight rise in stock price. All analysts were writing safe analyses like “Finnish old factory changes leadership, can the newcomer reverse the decline?”

No one realized that this company was quietly changing its engine.

An Undervalued Acquisition

If you only look at Hotard’s appointment, it’s just a normal executive change. But when you put it together with another event from half a year earlier, the script completely changes.

In June 2024, Nokia announced the acquisition of an American company—Infinera—for 2.3 billion USD.

What kind of company is Infinera? It’s in optical networking—simply put, fiber optic communication equipment between data centers and within data centers.

If you’ve talked to someone working on AI infrastructure, you’ll know a fact:

The biggest bottleneck for AI data centers isn’t GPUs; it’s optical communication.

Nvidia packs 72 GPUs in a cabinet, and these GPUs need to exchange data frantically. A data center with tens of thousands of GPUs also needs to exchange data. Synchronizing training data between two data centers. The more clusters, the exponentially greater the demand for optical modules.

That’s why, in the past two years, optical module companies—like Coherent in the U.S., Zhongji Xuchuang and NewEase in China—saw their stock prices soar.

Infinera is one of the few companies that master both photonic integrated circuits (PIC) and data center interconnect core technologies. It already has established client relationships with North American hyperscale cloud providers (Microsoft, Amazon, Google).

When Nokia signed this deal in June 2024, the market’s interpretation was: “A traditional telecom company has acquired a traditional fiber optics company—‘two big elephants cuddling’ narrative.”

But after the deal closed in February 2025 and Infinera was consolidated into Nokia, the Finnish old factory’s financial figures began to change:

• In 2025, full-year optical networking revenue grew 17% year-over-year

• In Q1 2026, optical networking sales hit €821 million, up 20% YoY, surpassing IP and core software to become Nokia’s second-largest business

• Sales from AI and cloud customers surged 49% quarter-over-quarter

The most critical figure: In Q1 2026, AI and cloud customers placed orders worth 1 billion euros with Nokia.

What does this number mean? It’s more than the entire sales of Infinera before the acquisition in a single quarter.

And all this, outside Western tech media, almost no one is talking about.

Jensen Huang’s Call

What really set the market on fire was on October 28, 2025.

On that day, Nvidia announced at the GTC conference in Washington: Nvidia would invest 1 billion USD in Nokia at a price of $6.01 per share.

Pay attention to this detail—“$6.01 per share” is a subscription price, not the market price. Nvidia isn’t buying on the secondary market; Nokia issued new shares specifically for this. Nvidia’s investment is strategic, not just financial.

Why did Jensen Huang give Nokia 1 billion USD?

Nvidia’s official statement is: the two will jointly develop AI-RAN (AI-enabled Radio Access Network). Nokia’s 5G and 6G software will be ported to Nvidia’s CUDA platform; Nvidia’s Arc-Pro accelerators, developed specifically for telecom, will be embedded into Nokia’s base stations.

T-Mobile US became the first pilot operator. Dell provides servers.

It sounds like a common “AI empowering industry” story. But the real Easter egg is hidden in a technical detail that 99% of people won’t notice.

First, you need to understand a background: in the AI-RAN track, Nokia isn’t the only player. Its biggest competitor is Ericsson, also from Scandinavia.

Ericsson and Nokia seem to do the same thing—provide 5G/6G base station equipment for operators. But in “how to put GPUs into base stations,” they’ve taken two completely opposite paths.

These paths are jokingly called “religious wars” by engineers.

The first path is Lookaside (offload acceleration). This is the route Ericsson and Intel are taking. Simply put: the base station’s CPU remains the main controller, and GPU is just an “assistant” helping out. When acceleration is needed, the CPU “throws” tasks to the GPU, which processes and then returns results. Data bounces back and forth between CPU and GPU.

The second path is Inline (online acceleration). This is the route Nokia and Nvidia are taking. Simply put: network data received by the base station first hits the GPU, which processes it before passing it to the CPU. The GPU becomes the main actor, the CPU the supporting role.

Does this sound like just an engineering sequence issue?

No, this is a fundamental disagreement about “who will be the computing center” in the future.

Nvidia’s entire existence is to prove that GPUs should be the center of data processing, and CPUs should step aside. The CUDA ecosystem and all design philosophies are “GPU-centric.” Lookaside architecture presumes “CPU remains the boss,” which fundamentally conflicts with Nvidia’s worldview.

So when Nvidia looks for a telecom partner, it can’t choose Ericsson. It must choose a partner willing to put GPUs in the C position.

Nokia is that partner.

That’s why this 1 billion USD isn’t just a “strategic investment.” Jensen Huang, in the new AI narrative, has personally stamped a mark—he’s buying an entry point for Nvidia’s GPUs into over 5 million base stations worldwide.

According to analyst firm Omdia’s forecast, by 2030, the cumulative AI-RAN market will exceed 200 billion USD.

If this story is told correctly, Jensen Huang’s 1 billion USD could be one of his highest lifetime returns.

Geopolitical Help

Nokia’s comeback also has a sensitive undercurrent.

On April 13, 2026, Bank of America analyst Oliver Wong upgraded Nokia from “Neutral” to “Buy,” with a target price sharply raised from €6.87 to €10.70. On that day, Nokia’s stock surged 9.67% in a single day, with trading volume 178% above the 3-month average.

In that report, Wong listed four reasons why Nokia was undervalued. The third reason, he wrote tactfully but very clearly:

“After European countries gradually restrict Huawei and ZTE, Nokia has effectively become the ‘last Western sovereign-grade supplier’ available.”

Plainly put: Europe wants to build sovereign data centers and 5G/6G networks, Chinese equipment can’t be used, the U.S. doesn’t have such companies, and the only remaining Western suppliers are Nokia and Ericsson. Since Ericsson lacks full-stack optical network capabilities, Infinera was acquired by Nokia, and Cisco is an American company, European sovereign cloud funds can almost only flow to Nokia.

This is a classic “geopolitical arbitrage” opportunity—shifts in the international order have handed Nokia a big gift. As long as it remains in the race, it can benefit from this dividend.

Plus, the huge demand from U.S. hyperscale cloud providers for optical networks, and T-Mobile’s bet on AI-RAN, three streams of capital are converging on Nokia from three directions.

Market Took 18 Months to Catch Up

Connecting all the clues, you’ll see a very dramatic timeline:

• June 2024, Nokia announces acquisition of Infinera

• February 2025, Hotard appointed as new CEO

• October 2025, Nvidia invests 1 billion USD

• April 13, 2026, BofA upgrades stock, +9.67% in one day

• April 22, 2026, Q1 earnings report reveals 1 billion euro AI/cloud orders, optical network business +20%

• April 27, 2026, CFRA doubles target price from $8 to $16, Nokia hits a new high since 2015

Noticed it?

The fundamentals started shifting 18 months ago. But it took the market 18 months to connect these clues.

This is the classic “value discovery” process. When a story isn’t fully clear, everyone treats it as “old wine in old bottle”; once the story is clear, valuation has already recovered significantly.

Nokia’s current forward PE is 26 times, not expensive for a 17% growth optical network business. But compared to its low point at the start of the year, it’s no longer the “forgotten stock” lying on the ground.

Chinese investors over the past two years have been focused on Nvidia, TSMC, Broadcom, AMD—these are the engines of this AI wave.

But beyond the engine, there are the gearbox, drive shaft, tires, and highway.

The AI narrative is spreading from “chips” to “pipelines.”

The story of optical module makers has been told for over a year. The next assets the market might reprice are base stations, fiber optics, data center power supplies, cooling systems.

Stories won’t repeat exactly, but they will rhyme.

When a new technological paradigm truly arrives, the greatest Alpha may not be where you expect.

It’s in those corners you think have been “forgotten.”